


Mirrors

by lavendre



Category: Tales of Berseria
Genre: F/F, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 20:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15937838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendre/pseuds/lavendre
Summary: Magilou wishes she could be a blade, too.





	Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Shakespeare challenge on femslashficlets last year. For prompt #6: let not light see my dark and deep desires. - Macbeth. Follows up Magilou's one-sided duel with Melchior.

Magilou wipes the blood from her nose on the back of her hand and smears it halfway up her forearm instead. With a wave of his hand Melchior thrusts her soul from her body and with an ominous crack she falls through the leaves and the grass with no indication for how long or far down her dark descent takes her. It was the weight of her years falling with her, all her grievances and failures -- or whatever, she just got knocked flat on her ass and that’s all there was to it.  
  
Across the hard ground she watched Velvet’s feet approach. Smoke curled from her charred figure like a desert mirage, except duller and less magical somehow, and maybe she was finally coming to choke the life out of her. Perhaps Melchior had mastered the arte of transformation, and this wasn't Velvet at all, just another ghost from a line of them.  
  
Humans wrote about an afterlife where their psychopomp would gather them up from their desecrated human body and lead them to their eternity. For some reason it was located across a deep and raging river, and  _how come no one ever thought to build a bridge to make work easier for that poor soul?_ She could walk herself, thanks.  
  
Reality came crashing back. Laughter bubbled inside her chest. No, Velvet couldn’t possibly be  _that.  
  
But it _ would _be a demon that would lead me to my resting place, wouldn't it.  
  
Had my dream continued, we really would have been enemies. How unfortunate._  
  
“I was about to start up a card game with Bienfu,” she blurts out. “--if you took any longer.” The grass is cool but splashed with her blood and like this it simply looks like an early autumn. Bienfu tiptoes through it to put his arms around her neck but it’s on him too, staining the rim of his hat purple. So maybe she got smashed around more than she could recall. No matter.  
  
Velvet says nothing, shifting her weight from hip to hip and it brings Magilou the greatest pleasure to hate her for it. Sure, she wasn’t expecting a congratulations on  _your-most-terrible-and-one-sided-duel-that-was-basically-a-flogging, but --_  
  
“You’re really strong,” Laphicet says, admiration clicking across his teeth. He fills up Magilou’s vision with white light and the relief his arte brings her trembling hands and vibrating teeth is enough to almost make her weep. She sucks on the inside of her cheek and wobbly thrusts herself from knees to feet instead. And -- someone needs to stop demarcating the lines between feeling and not feeling anything. This entire situation is humiliating.   
  
Their presence shouldn't bring her any consolation.  
  
“Yeah,” Velvet says, echoing the sentiment. “Sorry for interrupting. Melchior looked like he was about to run screaming toward the capital.” She inclines her head to meet her gaze for the first time. “I’m sure we’ll see him again.”   
  
There’s no helping it. Velvet’s obsessed with her dead brother and Magilou can’t tell anymore if that’s strength or weakness. It’s both. It’s something else altogether. It’s a conglomeration of everything the Abbey tried to wrestle out of her. She hates it by nature but part of her can appreciate it -- she wishes she could be brash, too.

 _Do you know how lucky you are? I would give anything to feel a tenth of what you do._  
  
Someone hands her her hat where it lies like a dead thing in the grass, but Magilou’s too focused on the pain in her head and how vibrant and green the grass is next to Velvet's boots to thank them.  
  
The only curses in the world are the people who exist in it. If that makes this quest a fool’s errand and her the biggest puppet, at least she knows her place. She wants someone to use her. She wants to be a blade.  
  
Really, it shouldn’t matter that Velvet came back. But it means the whole world. It means that she can, too.


End file.
